Erin Kellison - Soul Kissed

Mason waited for his son to climb out of the car, then slammed the back passenger door shut. “One more time, please.”

“Ugh, Dad. ” Fletcher’s gaze was off across the tire-matted stretch of grass that acted as parking for the fairgrounds. Families with strollers and groups of summer-ready teens slowly streamed toward the entrance and ticket booth.

“Fletcher.” Mason put a little warning in his voice.

Fletcher dragged his attention over and sighed with exaggerated eight-year-old suffering. Repeated by rote, “I’ll do whatever you say.”

Mason didn’t like this. It was one thing to go out into the open himself. Entirely another to take Fletcher. “One mistake—”

The eye roll, which was new this year. “Jeez, Dad. I know.”

Mason let the point go, though anxiety still riddled his nerves. He fished out a tube of sunscreen from a plastic grocery bag. “Hand.”

Fletcher held out his palm for a squirt. He smeared the lotion all over his face. When he was done, Mason had a Red Sox baseball cap waiting. And when that was settled on his son’s head, Mason held out a twenty-dollar bill. “So you don’t have to bug me for every little thing.”

Fletcher grinned, showing front teeth too big for his mouth, empty gaps on either side. The sight did something to Mason’s heart. It took so little to make his son happy. And so very much more to keep him safe. And yet, this was the time he’d been born into; better that Fletcher start learning to handle himself now, before the world grew even darker.

They started across the grass, host to lots of small, biting flies. The grass grew sparse nearer the ticket booth, where the buzz turned to bees dancing around the still-sweet trash bins.

Mason had his head down to his wallet when he felt the tell-tale sing in his blood of a mage passing by behind him. He glanced at Fletcher, who kept his attention on the booth as well, though Mason knew his son had to have sensed the passage of Shadow too. The magic would have pulled at his son’s own power. Awareness of Shadow nearby was a family trait.

Keep a cool head, and Fletcher will do the same. Mason had read about modeling behavior in his parenting books. He just hoped his son didn’t know what he did to make a living, or the teen years were going to be a nightmare. The cursing was already a problem.

“All right.” Mason turned. “Should we stuff our faces first, or do you want to hit the rides?”

Fletcher went for long-suffering again. “Rides.” The kid wisely left off the implied duh.

The sideways pie of the Ferris wheel loomed thataway. Other side of the fair. Mason put his wallet in his back pocket. “Come on.”

The Stanton public recreation department had gone all out for the city’s annual May Fair and Market. More interesting was the full-page invitation in the city’s newspaper, inviting the “Shadow people” to the event—a friendly, if desperate, measure in an increasingly frightening world. The fair’s committee had elected to go medieval with the theme, probably thinking magekind would like it. As if mages hadn’t been around in every era.

The main path was festooned with ropes of fragrant flowers, all leading to the central park, where a many-ribboned maypole had been erected. Vendors lined the walkways with art, dragon jewelry, face painting, and sugar-crusted deep-fried donuts, the latter of which made Mason’s mouth water against his will. Might have to get one of those. The bass and drums of live music bounced down the paths, though the band was playing at the far end, on a stage erected at the closed-to-cars traffic circle. Droves of people congested the walkways, some because the May Fair was tradition, but all hoping to spot a real live mage.

The open invitation to magekind was an attempt on the part of the mayor to draw out his mage constituency and to show that he was friendly to their interests. Very clever. Risky, but clever.

In most places in the world, the idea that there were people with magic in their blood was still met with derision. And yet, it had been years now that soul-sucking wraiths skulking the alleys had been caught on mobile phone cameras and uploaded online. And though mage law forbade the use of Shadow in public, it was happening more and more often. Plus, the earthquakes last year had never been fully explained.

The awful truth? Shadow now saturated the world. Mages could feel the return of power in their blood. And they were organizing various schemes to suit themselves.

The newspaper invitation had done its job, and the “Shadow people” had come, mostly for the fun of it. People with magic-black eyes were everywhere: standing in line for the twist-and-spin, winning at the ring toss, and wolfing down mustard-dipped hotdogs on a stick.

Yes, a very friendly venue.

The rides made both Mason and Fletcher nauseous, so of course they had to eat. Mason scanned the crowds as they headed toward the food alley, and spotted Fletcher’s friend Bran and his father, Riordan Webb, head of Webb House, an instant before Fletcher grabbed his arm. Riordan was thinly built with long limbs, like a human daddy longlegs. He was aged closer to grandfather than father, but then he’d had to go through three wives to get an heir.

The boy, Bran, took after his mother—stocky, tow-headed, always chattering.

“Can I?” Fletcher’s face had flushed with the late spring heat. He had a cloud of boy sweat around him.

Mason steeled himself inside— here we go —but nodded. Webb was someone he’d hoped they’d bump into. “Okay.”

Connections like these were why they’d come in the first place. That, and curiosity. Would this be what the coming Dark Age would be like?

“Riordan,” Mason drawled when Webb joined him to watch the boys whoop and wrestle in the dust.

“Mason,” Webb returned, holding out his long, thin hand. “Was wondering if I’d see you here.”

“Couldn’t resist after I saw the invitation.”

“First open invite to Shadow in our lifetime. No one could resist.”

Mason’s point exactly.

“I’ve been hearing things about you,” Webb mused.

“Oh?” Mason had been doing work for a lot of terrible causes lately. Maybe Webb had a job for him, too.

“How did a lousy stray like you catch the Council’s ear?”

Stray meaning no family, no House to claim him or Fletcher. He and his son were at the mercy of all the hellish things this world and the other worlds beyond could throw at them. The more friends Mason could make, the better Fletcher’s chances at surviving.

Mason laughed and shook Webb’s hand. Riordan had deigned to speak to a stray, which was a good beginning. That the master of Webb House gripped his hand was even better. It meant respect.

“I have my uses,” Mason answered.

“So I’ve noticed.”

Which was the point of all Mason’s work. Not that he remotely cared what the mage Houses thought of him. In fact, he’d been prepared to walk away from magekind some nine years ago.

Then came Fletcher, and life had radically upended, like a sudden magnetic reversal of poles. The mage Houses became everything: safety and strength. Mason just had to find, connive, coerce, or thieve his way into one. Right now Fletcher might as well be exposed in the open with a hurricane bearing down on him. These people all around—debating hand-made jewelry and licking the sides of their ice cream cones for drips—they had no idea what was coming.

Fletcher came running back, babbling about a sword and begging, “Please, Dad, five more bucks,” and repeatedly saying, “Epic!”—a word he must have picked up from Bran.